Motivational Quotes

Evolution

The more specific idea of Evolution now reached is -- a change from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity, accompanying the dissipation of motion and integration of matter.

- Spencer, Herbert

Best Quotes about Evolution

Organic life, we are told, has developed gradually from the protozoon to the philosopher, and this development, we are assured, is indubitably an advance. Unfortunately it is the philosopher, not the protozoon, who gives us this assurance.

Russell, Bertrand

It is easier to run a revolution than a government.

Marcos, Ferdinand E.

God created a number of possibilities in case some of his prototypes failed -- that is the meaning of evolution.

Greene, Graham

Every revolutionary ends up by becoming either an oppressor or a heretic.

Camus, Albert

Whether a revolutions succeeds or fails people of great hearts will always be sacrificed to it.

Heine, Heinrich

Evolution is gaining the psychic zones of the world...life, being and ascent of consciousness, could not continue to advance indefinitely along its line without transforming itself in depth. The being who is the object of his own reflection, in consequence, of that very doubling back upon himself becomes in a flash able to raise himself to a new sphere.

Chardin, Pierre Teilhard De

Revolutions are always verbose.

Trotsky, Leon

One of the stupidest theories of Western life.

Muggeridge, Malcolm

Historians will have to face the fact that natural selection determined the evolution of cultures in the same manner as it did that of species.

Lorenz, Konrad

10.

The dead have been awakened -- shall I sleep? The world's at war with tyrants -- shall I crouch? the harvest's ripe -- and shall I pause to reap? I slumber not; the thorn is in my couch; Each day a trumpet soundeth in mine ear, its echo in my heart.

Byron, Lord

11.

People who talk about revolution and class struggle without referring explicitly to everyday life, without understanding what is subversive about love and what is positive in the refusal of constraints, such people have a corpse in their mouth.

Vaneigem, Raoul

12.

The children of the revolution are always ungrateful, and the revolution must be grateful that it is so.

Guin, Ursula K. Le

13.

To be a revolutionary you have to be human being. You have to care about people who have no power.

Fonda, Jane

14.

Independence in the end is the fruit of injustice.

Voltaire

15.

The revolutionary spirit is mighty convenient in this, that it frees one from all scruples as regards ideas. Its hard absolute optimism is repulsive to my mind by the menace of fanaticism and intolerance it contains. No doubt one should smile at these things; but, imperfect Esthete, I am no better Philosopher. All claim to special righteousness awakens in me that scorn and anger from which a philosophical mind should be free.

Conrad, Joseph

16.

Revolutions are brought about by men, by men who think as men of action and act as men of thought.

Nkrumah, Kwame

17.

It is disturbing to discover in oneself these curious revelations of the validity of the Darwinian theory. If it is true that we have sprung from the ape, there are occasions when my own spring appears not to have been very far.

Skinner, Cornelia Otis

18.

Disturbances in society are never more fearful than when those who are stirring up the trouble can use the pretext of religion to mask their true designs.

Diderot, Denis

19.

The question is this -- Is man an ape or an angel? My Lord, I am on the side of the angels. I repudiate with indignation and abhorrence these new fanged theories.

Disraeli, Benjamin

20.

A revolution does not last more than fifteen years, the period which coincides with the flourishing of a generation.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

21.

Every successful revolution puts on in time the robes of the tyrant it has deposed.

Tuchman, Barbara

22.

Clemency is also a revolutionary measure.

Desmoulins, Camille

23.

Riots are the voices of the unheard.

King Jr. Martin Luther

24.

A great revolution is never the fault of the people, but of the government.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

25.

A man may build himself a throne of bayonets, but he can't sit on it.

Inge, Dean William R.

26.

The spirit of revolution, the spirit of insurrection, is a spirit radically opposed to liberty.

Guizot, Francois (Pierre Guillaume)

27.

One revolution is like one cocktail, it just gets you organized for the next.

Rogers, Will

28.

Revolutions are not made for export.

Khrushchev, Nikita

29.

Evolution has developed man to such a high degree that he builds zoos to keep his ancestors in cages.

30.

Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose, but their chains. .Workers of the world unite!

Marx, Karl

31.

A revolution is not a bed of roses. A revolution is a struggle between the future and the past.

Castro, Fidel

32.

If you want a symbolic gesture, don't burn the flag, wash it.

Thomas, Norman

33.

After listening to a lecture on evolution by a science professor, a student wrote a poem and titled it The Amazing Professor. The poem read: Once I was a tadpole when I began to begin. Then I was a frog with my tail tucked in. Next I was a monkey on a coconut tree. Now I am a doctor with a Ph.D.

34.

Revolutions are notorious for allowing even non-participants -- even women! -- new scope for telling the truth since they are themselves such massive moments of truth, moments of such massive participation.

James, Selma

35.

Oh, my friend, it's not what they take away from you that counts -- it's what you do with what you have left.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

36.

A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.

Zedong, Mao

37.

The scrupulous and the just, the noble, humane, and devoted natures; the unselfish and the intelligent may begin a movement -- but it passes away from them. They are not the leaders of a revolution. They are its victims.

Conrad, Joseph

38.

It is curious how there seems to be an instinctive disgust in Man for his nearest ancestors and relations. If only Darwin could conscientiously have traced man back to the Elephant or the Lion or the Antelope, how much ridicule and prejudice would have been spared to the doctrine of Evolution.

Ellis, Havelock

39.

Revolution begins with the self, in the self.

Bambara, Toni Cade

40.

In a revolution, as in a novel. the most difficult part to invent is the end.

Tocqueville, Alexis De

41.

All partisan movements add to the fullness of our understanding of society as a whole. They never detract; or, in any case, one must not allow them to do so. Experience adds to experience.

Walker, Alice

42.

We have wasted our spirit in the regions of the abstract and general just as the monks let it wither in the world of prayer and contemplation.

Herzen, Alexander

43.

We are the products of editing, rather than of authorship.

Wald, George

44.

The excessive increase of anything causes a reaction in the opposite direction.

Plato

45.

Normal life cannot sustain revolutionary attitudes for long.

Djilas, Milovan

46.

Darwinian man, though well-behaved, at best is only a monkey shaved.

Gilbert, W. S.

47.

Most revolutionaries are potential Tories, because they imagine that everything can be put right by altering the shape of society; once that change is effected, as it sometimes is, they see no need for any other.

Orwell, George

48.

A nation grown free in a single day is a child born with the limbs and the vigor of a man, who would take a drawn sword for his rattle, and set the house in a blaze that he might chuckle over the splendor.

Smith, Sydney

49.

No one makes a revolution by himself; and there are some revolutions which humanity accomplishes without quite knowing how, because it is everybody who takes them in hand.

Sand, George

50.

The surest guide to the correctness of the path that women take is joy in the struggle. Revolution is the festival of the oppressed.

Greer, Germaine